I’m Trapped in a Cube - Chapter 59

“This game is called-Hide and Seek.”

The bubble person said it would hide, and Liang Zhi was to catch it.

But that wasn’t the main point. When he caught it, he had to say who it was, or else he lost.

“What happens if I lose?”

“If you lose, we start over and keep playing until you win.”

At this time, Liang Zhi didn’t yet know what this “start over” really meant.

He only felt that the price demanded by this “bubble person” relic was much smaller than he had imagined.

And as long as he completed the hide and seek, he would get the answer he had always wanted. This was a very profitable deal.

At this moment, he was already overwhelmed by the strange attraction, his mind full of curiosity, especially eager to find the whereabouts of the primordial cell.

So Liang Zhi agreed.

This also became the beginning of his suffering.

The bubble person even gave Liang Zhi a Druid’s Spine to wear immediately.

“This can record how many times you have lost.”

Although he didn’t know how it worked, Liang Zhi knew what the Druid’s Spine was, so he had no doubts.

He had never had a relic before, and suddenly getting one made him very happy; he didn’t sense anything wrong.

Under the unknown attraction, he lost his judgment.

After putting on the Druid’s Spine, the bubble person shook hands with Liang Zhi, proving their agreement was sealed.

Liang Zhi played the game with the bubble person, and the bubble person told him the answer.

At the moment of the handshake, the water membrane surged over his body.

Liang Zhi watched himself age rapidly.

“Next, I will blindfold you and start running,” the bubble person told Liang Zhi.

Immediately after, Liang Zhi lost consciousness.

A spine dropped to the ground.

When he woke up, Liang Zhi had no memory of the bubble person or the game.

All he remembered was discovering a strange egg, the acceleration zone around it, and painstakingly finding a Druid’s Spine…

This was the version of events he had told at the start.

His memory had been tampered with.

But his subconscious kept telling him-finding the strange egg was finding the primordial cell.

His thoughts became confused, and his pursuit of the primordial cell turned into a longing for the strange egg, almost madly wanting to find it.

He returned to the place where he first found the egg, but it was gone.

The obsession echoed in his mind; finding the egg became his only goal.

Liang Zhi began searching around the Great Hollow Tree repeatedly.

He was very familiar with the Theseus Cell area.

So soon, after one visit to the Theseus area, he found the strange egg again.

With the bubble person appearing, memories flooded back instantly, and everything about the game returned to his mind, the tampered memories fading.

“I found you! Where’s my wish?” he said excitedly.

“You haven’t said who I am yet,” the bubble person replied calmly.

Hearing this, Liang Zhi froze. He realized he truly didn’t know the bubble person’s name.

So he guessed randomly, “Bubble.” He still didn’t know what would happen next.

“You guessed wrong. This time you lost.”

Following was the bubble person’s handshake, a spine fell, and the Druid’s Spine on the ground became two.

His memories were tampered with again…

Liang Zhi became that obsessed ordinary researcher again, running to the Theseus area every day.

He knew this place well, and after a few days, he found the strange egg again.

Memories restored.

This time, he didn’t rush to say the name but chatted with the bubble person.

“What’s your name?”

“I have no name,” the bubble person answered.

Liang Zhi immediately felt cheated and angrily said, “Then why are you playing this game with me? I’m bound to lose, right?”

“Someone gave me a name. Now I have one, but you have to guess it yourself,” the bubble person added.

“So what’s your name?”

“I have no name.”

“…”

Liang Zhi asked many times, and the bubble person’s answer was always the same. He thought the bubble person was deliberately hiding, so he had to investigate himself.

“Are you called ‘Aladdin’s Lamp’?”

…

He lost again.

The spines became three…

In the following days, Liang Zhi fell into a cycle of finding the strange egg, finding the egg, guessing the wrong name, and having his memories tampered with.

The Druid’s Spines beneath the egg slowly piled into a nest.

Later, when Liang Zhi found the egg but hadn’t restored his memories, he even found the nest of Druid’s Spines fascinating.

When the bubble person appeared and his memories gradually returned, he looked at the spines everywhere with horror.

These were all once him…

So he began to stall, deliberately not guessing the bubble person’s name, but this would count as a loss after a while.

He could only try again and again.

After many memory tampering cycles, he gradually began to understand the bubble person.

He discovered that the strange egg was the bubble person’s true body.

So every time he found the egg, he studied it.

At first, he just tapped and poked it, but eventually he found that even if he destroyed the egg, the bubble person wouldn’t say anything.

The next time he saw it, the egg would have returned to perfect condition.

Although his memories were tampered with every time, something always remained in his subconscious.

He began to carry various research instruments to search for the egg, his subconscious telling him these might help.

Sure enough, after one exploration, he used microscopes to observe the liquid flowing from the egg.

Liang Zhi discovered the wriggling cube-shaped small cells inside.

He felt he had finally found the egg’s true form.

But through data queries, he found this was a type of cell never discovered before.

After spending so much time, he couldn’t name it, so he started a new round of the game.

In the next few rounds, he had a bold guess:

“Those cube-shaped small cells are the primordial cells!”

The bubble person had told him in previous rounds that as long as the answer was roughly close, it would let him win and not make things difficult.

“You can use definitional names. As long as you say what I am, you win,” the bubble person prompted Liang Zhi.

But at that time, Liang Zhi didn’t realize the bubble person was hinting at him and only began trying different naming methods.

After finding the egg again, memories surged, and he eagerly shouted his guess, “You are life composed of primordial cells!”

When he confidently shouted who the bubble person was, the bubble person once again declared the game over.

“The answer is very close, but you lost again.”

The spine fell again.

Liang Zhi reverted to the tampered state.

His subconscious kicked in again.

Because of discovering those little cubes, his concepts of the egg and primordial cells became more confused, even deeper.

He often began to doubt himself, wondering why he was so sure the liquid inside the egg was primordial cells.

But these doubts quickly dissolved after seeing the egg.

Then the spine fell, and the cycle repeated…